OPIUM ICE CREAM

                                             A Surprise Flavor

     One evening leaving a restaurant in Vienna where we’d enjoyed a really good, if different, pizza my travel buddy said, “An ice cream would be a perfect topping of a great meal.”

     “What a good idea!  I’m sure I saw an ice cream kiosk a block from the hotel when I was scouting out the neighborhood this afternoon before you arrived. (She lives in LA). We should hit it if we cross here and then turn right,” I answered.

     We did just that and then joined a short line in front of the kiosk. It was hard to make a choice of the twenty or so flavors displayed. Each was labeled, but in Austrian or German. It didn’t make any difference as norther of us spoke either language.

    I tried to find out from the young man behind the counter what flavor the vanilla-looking ice cream with tiny dark specks in it was.  Maybe chocolate chip?  The fellow didn’t speak any English, which was surprising for a young male.

     Not wanting to hold up the line forming behind us I gave up the conversation and just took the ice cream.  For this ice creamaholic, I knew no matter what the flavor it would be good. Licking our cones we walked off heading toward the hotel. Suddenly we heard a  young man  say, “Ladies, ladies. That ice cream you are eating is opium ice cream.”

    “What!” we exclaimed simultaneously.

     “Yes, you know like from the poppies that grow in Afghanistan. Opium ice cream,” he commented.

     After a minute a light went on in my head and I said, “Oh, you mean poppy seed.”

     “Yes, Yes.” He strolled past us licking on his cone.

     He was standing directly behind us, and we both wondered why he hadn’t jumped in to interpret for us when we were trying to converse with the vendor.

     We had a good chuckle over my opium ice cream and often mentioned it on succeeding trips when we were together.

PETER RABBIT

                                                A Naturalist as Well

      Beatrix Potter was very close to her dad, a wealthy barrister, but found her mother cold and domineering. As a child Beatrix had little contact with her family as she and her younger brother spent their time with a governess in rooms upstairs in the home. Unbelievably, she was in her mid-teens before joining the family for dinner.

     She started a journal at age fifteen and kept it until she was thirty. She wrote in code. The journal was discovered in 1950 but it took nine years to decode it. Some speculate that she used a code because she felt her mother was nosey and intrusive.  At sixteen a Vicar at a nearby church encouraged Beatrix to write and draw.

     A naturalist at an early age, she kept all kinds of critters, named them and created stories about them. As a young woman she had a profitable business drawing greeting cards.

     Vacations in Scotland during childhood sparked an interest in fungi, and she became an expert. She presented a paper on spore formation and other theories using a pseudonym, and had a male friend make the presentation. In the 1800s women did not do such things or attend male conventions.

     When her last governess left and had children Beatrix sent picture letters to the children, which became the beginning of her books. When six publishers rejected Peter Rabbit she self-published 150 copies, easily sold them to friends and then ordered 200 more copies. Peter, Flopsie, Mopsie and Cottontail have been famous ever since. She illustrated all of her books.

    In 1913, at 47, Beatrix married and thereafter was known as Beatrix Potter Heelis.  A sheep farmer’s wife, she only wrote four books after her marriage. However not idle, she is credited with saving the nearly extinct Herdwick sheep to a now thriving population. She was the first woman to serve as president of the Herdwick Sheep Association